KIDS Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I ask to manage the time on behalf of the opposition since I am opposed to the bill in its current form.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure glad my friend, the chairman of Judiciary, sought time for people to revise and extend their remarks, because they are going to need it. This thing keeps changing. I mean, I reviewed this bill last week. I spent a long time going line by line, only to find yesterday there's still a new version, and today I was provided a 98-page bill. I can't tell you the pages of the issues that I am most concerned about because the version keeps changing.

Now, this bill includes $330 million in authorizations. Normally, suspensions

are noncontroversial, but the fact that this bill keeps changing is absolute evidence that this is not noncontroversial. It keeps changing because people can't figure out what is the best thing to do.

I would submit there is a good reason for that. The bill that this seeks to renew and programs that are sought to be renewed are ones we don't have information on how successful they were, and that was the original purpose of this bill. Back when it expired in 2005, we still did not have the information on what worked and what didn't.

I can tell you from my days as a judge, there was some anecdotal evidence that it looked like faith-based programs did a better job of dramatically reducing recidivism. In one case I was shown results from a prison in Texas where it dropped down to about 8 percent from over 80 percent because of faith-based programs and mentoring.

This new version, I haven't even been through it. I haven't had time to go through it. But the one that I saw and reviewed on Friday, it included reentry programs allowing payment for housing and health care. I know our military members who are leaving after less than 20 years in the service with honorable discharges would love to have that kind of help reentering.

There are some provisions that allow for too much administration, in my opinion; 11 percent at one point, 15 percent at another. That is not going to help people. That is going to build a bigger bureaucracy.

Dismissing all charges if someone completes drug rehab under another provision I think is outrageous. You are going to remove the hammer that would allow you to keep people in line? It is one thing to say we are going to remove you and not have you go to prison and instead send you to drug rehab, and then if you get through there, before you have a chance to go out and do cocaine again, we are going to drop all charges so we have no hammer over your head. I don't know if this is in the final bill. It was in there last I saw on Friday.

There is a provision that allows payments through the Department of Labor for support. There are military members, and I went to another funeral Saturday, a gentleman who was not killed in Iraq, he was killed during surgery, but I know his family would love to have the kind of support being provided in here for felons.

We also have a provision in here, we are going to pay people through these grants to teach inmates how they can go about getting the most welfare before they leave prison and go out on their own. There is also a provision that moves inmates to home detention without approval of the judge who sentenced the individual.

In this bill, the elderly, for purposes of moving to home detention, is defined as 65. I guess apparently under this bill, without any underlying evidence or research to support it, we have arbitrarily picked 65 as deciding that is when people are harmless. But I know from my own experience around this Chamber, there are people in Congress that are 65 or older that are certainly not harmless. In any event, I think that is a little bit too young to classify people as harmless.

There is a provision that assistance will be provided by the United States probation system and it ``shall'' be done. I don't know, I can't find from the bill what kind of assistance that will be. But I think we have all got the same goal. I think one of the worst atrocities in the justice system has been our lack of rehabilitating and educating and preparing people to go out into the world and become productive citizens and finally reach the God-given potential that every one of them has. I couldn't agree more with the proposition, and I know that is the heart of my colleagues across the aisle. But we don't have the information on which programs are successful and which aren't.

I want to work together on a program. I've kind of been cut out of this process. The National Summit on Prisoner Reentry is coming up in Los Angeles on November 27 and 28, but we are going to rush this through on a suspension bill for $330 million without even having a chance to really review the most recent document.

Yes, I will be glad to yield, and if you can show that we have gotten the recent version----

Claiming back my time, I am not yielding for you to criticize me.

I appreciate yielding to the gentlelady to come down and call me outrageous. But what is outrageous is this process, this process of taking something so important and rushing it in here without having the proper input and the proper information. The National Institute of Justice has got their biggest study program in its history ongoing, and we don't have the results, and yet my colleagues want to rush in and throw $330 million at a process that is unproven and untried.

I just don't think that is the way to go. We have got honest people involved in the process, but the process itself here has not been honest.

With that, I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield for a question?

Was there no version of the bill filed today? Was there no version of the Second Chance Act filed today?

Thank you.

May I inquire how much time I've got.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Nothing would please me more than to be involved in the process of constructively working on these issues. When I think about the gentlelady saying that my comments were outrageous, everything that I have said is documented. Everything I have said comes from reading through this bill, as well as my own experience from my days of being a judge.

I wholeheartedly agree, we should do a better job of rehabilitating and educating. In fact, I just get concerned when we get so anxious to try to do something good that we end up throwing money at a problem just so we can say we worked on it, something had to be done.

But it was the National Institute of Justice Award to RTI International, a nonprofit research organization, to evaluate the programs funded by the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. This is one of the largest evaluation studies funded by the NIJ, and it is doing this research. The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization in D.C., is the collaborator on the project. I am really looking forward to getting that information. I am wondering why we throw more money at a situation before we get the information that tells me how and tells us how to be most effective?

When my good friend the chairman, and I do think the world of him, talks about comity and goodwill, that is what I would love to have. But when we have such trouble getting copies of the latest versions, and then the chairman says, gee, I had the latest version on Friday, I was notified by the committee staff that there was a new version as of yesterday and then the new version was filed today. So, I didn't have everything Friday. That has been one of the problems here. This is too important of an issue to just be throwing good money after bad.

I would also point out that in the interests of comity and goodwill, the bills that follow this, H.R. 3845, PROTECT Our Children Act of 2007, I indicated before that sounded like something I would want to be part of and helping with, but we never did get a final version that we could say, yes, I want to cosponsor that.

Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2007 sounds like another good bill, but we haven't seen it. And talking to the Judiciary staff, that and the Effective Child Pornography Prosecution Act, H.R. 4120, that follows that, we are still trying to get updated versions of those things. So that doesn't sound to me like comity and goodwill, when we are struggling over here to even get copies.

We don't know what requests had been granted. There were things requested by the Department of Justice, in the interest of justice, please get these provisions put in this bill. We don't know what was put in and what wasn't. That, to me, does not indicate comity and goodwill. It creates all kinds of problems.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

I am not sure which four things the chairman is referring to.

I thank the chairman.

Reclaiming my time, I have been over here in the 20 minutes or so before I came up to speak talking to Judiciary staff who, unless they are changing their story now, have not been able to get the latest information on this bill. Well, they have got it on this bill. We have the final copy. I haven't had a chance to review it since it has been filed today. Most of us were out doing what we should have been doing yesterday, paying tribute to veterans all over our districts. But these subsequent bills, these are still a problem that I have been having with the Second Chance Act, getting the latest information on this.

My dear friend, Mr. Coble, we serve together on the Judiciary, had asked for time, and at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We heard moments ago that there are 212 organizations supporting the bill. I have talked to many of them over the course of our discussions on the Second Chance Act, great, noble, wonderful organizations. I couldn't find but one out of numerous ones that I talked to that actually read the bill. They all have the same goals. They all want to see adequate education and rehabilitation, cutting down on recidivism. We all want to see that. I want to see that. I think we have got to do that as a civilized society. There are many that support this goal. But, again, many haven't seen the bill.

And I have checked with the staff in the interim. For example, H.R. 719 is file-stamped November 13 at 1:11 today, and the Judiciary got it for the first time just before 3 p.m. so that you know.

But if we really want to help the situation, doesn't it make sense to get the information on one of the biggest-funded programs NIJ has ever had so we put the money where it works and take it away from where it doesn't work?

Mr. Speaker, in responding to the chairman's comment, I would have to say I noticed in reviewing the bill on Friday, it is a better bill than it was, in my opinion; but we still have a little ways to go. That is why I just think this is a bill in its present form, as it continues to morph, that should not be on the Suspension Calendar, but should come up under a regular rule where we have a chance to work on these other issues.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time so the gentleman from Michigan has the time to respond.

I appreciate the chairman yielding. I think we are getting closer, actually.

I would like to see the information that is being prepared to come forth on November 27 and 28, the newest information that is being brought to bear, all of these groups coming together. I would think then by December we ought to be able to have something.

Might I inquire, I don't have any other speakers, if I can find out where the chairman is with regard to additional speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate Mrs. Tubbs Jones' comments. And I guess calling me or my comments outrageous was somewhat offensive, but as an old judge I was used to that. In fact, I have been called all kinds of names.

And, yes, even 2 days ago when I was buying some potting soil back home, I had a guy come up to me with his father and said if it were not for me, he would never have straightened his life up.

Those are not uncommon comments. And what it came from was being fair, but also having tough love. Because, as those who have been involved in dealing with people who have been addicted to drugs or alcohol, it does take tough love. And you do want to help them get out of the cycle rather than becoming an enabler. And that is my number one concern, is that we do not want to be enablers.

And when we talk about Scripture, absolutely, there are all kinds of verses that apply to us for those that believe the teachings of Jesus as I do. They are entirely appropriate. Those are directed to individuals. If you get over to Romans 13, that is directed to the government. And where it says if you do evil, you need to be afraid, because God does not give the government the sword in vain, that is part of the role of government; if you do evil, then there are consequences.

But it is a worthy goal to want to try to stop the cycle of recidivism. We all, I think, want that. No, I don't think; I know, we all want that same goal. But I am very concerned that we may be enabling by throwing money at a problem.

One of the saddest words and lines I ever heard came at a hearing when the wealthiest people in my home county, they had the courtroom packed so that they were hoping that I would put her on probation yet again, and they knew she had had it too many times and it wasn't going to happen under me. And it didn't. And it turns out she had a huge trust fund every month. She never had to work, she never had to study, and she had spent all her money on drugs. And the last thing she said before I sentenced her was, ``I wish somebody had told me `no' before today and meant it.''

She has now gotten out. Her mother, when I was walking neighborhoods, I went up to her door and her mother said, ``Come in and sit down.'' She said, ``You know, my husband and I just hated you at one point, but you saved our daughter's life.''

Sometimes it is the tough love things that turn things around. We want the same goal. I don't want to throw good money after bad in renewed programs that shouldn't be. And I hope that if this fails on suspension, we can get the new data that is going to be forthcoming and work toward the same goal with additional, more helpful information.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1593) to reauthorize the grant program for reentry of offenders into the community in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, to

improve reentry planning and implementation, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration and on H.R. 3461.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, as the prison population has grown over the past two decades, so has the number of prisoners completing their sentencing and returning to the general population. More than half a million, some 650,000 men and women, are leaving the Federal and State prisons each year. While the vast majority of the prisoners are committed to abiding by the law and becoming productive members of society, they often encounter the same pressures, the same environment, the same temptations that they faced before prison, and with insufficient resources to assist them in dealing with those pressures and temptations, sometimes, despite their best intentions at the time of release, too many of them commit new crimes and end up back in prison. More than two-thirds of them are arrested for new crimes within 3 years of their release. This exacts a terrible cost in financial terms as well as in human terms.

Congress has been very active over the years in strengthening our criminal laws and our investigative and prosecutorial tools against crime. The bipartisan legislation we are considering today, aptly named the Second Chance Act, complements those efforts by helping give ex- offenders the tools they need to stay out of trouble. It's a very commonsense piece of legislation and it recognizes that too many ex- offenders lack the education, job skills and stable living arrangements, the substance abuse treatment and health services that they need to successfully reintegrate into our society.

Many have trouble finding a job and some have trouble holding a job. Many move straight from their prison cell to a homeless shelter. Many entered prison with alcohol and drug habits, and the pull remains hard to resist once they reemerge in our society. Many are physically or mentally disabled. Some have chronic disease; others need psychological treatment. Many left spouses and young children behind when they entered prison. While these family relationships can be of tremendous value in helping an ex- offender build a stable life outside prison, it can be very difficult to rekindle these ties after a long and painful absence.

The Second Chance Act will help provide these men and women with the education, training, counseling and other support needed to help them obtain and hold steady jobs; to kick their drug and alcohol habits, if they have one; address medical and dental needs; rebuild their families; and deal with the many other challenges that they face in their efforts to successfully rejoin society. These kinds of programs have been tested on a smaller scale, to be sure, where they have already made a measurable difference in reducing recidivism. The Second Chance Act builds on these efforts in a measured but significant way to reduce recidivism, increase public safety, and help ex-offenders lead productive and law-abiding lives.

We have the support of current and former chairmen and ranking members of the Judiciary Committee and the crime subcommittee, chaired by Bobby Scott of Virginia, as well as a wide range of national, State and local law enforcement and rehabilitative organizations.

I submit for the Record a new section-by-section analysis reflecting some of the revisions to the bill reported in response to suggestions by members of the Committee on the Judiciary. I urge my colleagues to give careful consideration in their support of this measure.

Changes to Second Chance Act of 2007 (Reported Version to Suspension

Version)

Added Rule of Construction to confirm Act does not create a

right or entitlement to assistance or services, and to

promote transfer of programs to programs not funded under

this Act.

Reduced number of new Federal programs from 18 to 10 by

consolidating or eliminating programs.

Reduce authorized spending from $427 million to $330

million over two fiscal years.

Reduced permissible uses under reauthorized reentry

demonstration programs from 21 to 9.

Added measurable goals for programs--reducing recidivism

rate by 50 percent over 5 years, and 10 percent over 2 years.

Prohibited Bureau of Prisons from Preventing Access to

Chapel Library Materials.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, here we are the day after Veterans Day. We come back in comity and goodwill. We are trying to finish off the last week before the Thanksgiving recess. And I want Judge Louie Gohmert, my dear friend from Texas, to understand as much as I can explain to him about the reservations that he has raised thus far.

I want him to know this is not a partisan bill at all and that the changes that have been made to the bill were made before Friday when you examined it. So if you were examining this measure on Friday, that is the last, that is all she wrote, because we haven't been in since then.

So, please understand that, first of all, this is a bipartisan bill. We had the hearings. We had a markup in which you participated rather actively. We had a record vote. We went to the Rules Committee. Everything is working I think very smoothly, according to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Bobby Scott, and the author of this bill for three Congresses, Congressman Danny Davis of Illinois.

Please know that we have been working on this bill. You are right, it has been through a lot of changes. The changes started before you graced us with your presence in the Judiciary Committee as a very important member of it. We have been working on this all the time. We think it is in an improved state.

I would just like you to know that we have 212 organizations, and because we are on a rather fast schedule here this afternoon, I won't bother you with them, but none of them are political. They are all community organizations. They are all organizations concerned with the reentry of people who have served their time and are now coming out.

We are trying to deal, Judge Gohmert, with this huge problem of people returning from their terms in prison. They come out and sometimes in my State, I hate to say this, they don't even have a bus ticket or a suit of new clothing to get to where they are supposed to be going. Many of them don't know where they are going. It is that dislocation that creates the situation of so many of them returning back.

One of the most distressing things I ever heard when I was visiting one of these places is that the guard tells the exiting prisoner, former prisoner who serves his term, ``I'll see you when you get back.'' Nothing tells the story more than I know there is nothing for you out in society. You're not trained for anything, you're not fit for anything, there are no jobs for you, so you're going to go back into your old ways and we're going to get you back in our clutches again. What we are trying to do, Judge Gohmert, is to change that. I know in your court you have seen your share of this kind of process even in Texas.

So I urge you to join with us in trying to be as constructive as you normally are, to help make everybody understand that we are trying to make

rehabilitation mean something besides just the phrase used in the criminal justice system.

Of course.

Absolutely, yes, it was.

You're welcome.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I am being told that we have been working with the minority in Judiciary on an ongoing basis, and I just wonder if you are aware that four of your changes in particular have been accepted and incorporated into the measure that is before us now?

I will bring them out for you and be happy to show them to you.

That is correct.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that you find we are making progress; that is very encouraging. How much time do you think we would need to arrive at a point where your observations about the bill and the needed improvement and our position would intersect so we could get it before the body?

I yield to the gentleman.

How about tomorrow? If I gave you 24 hours, what would happen differently?

Mr. Speaker, I am going to recognize the distinguished whip of the majority, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), for 2 minutes, and maybe within his comments he can help us frame some kind of time line.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize now the author of this bill, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). We said it started three Congresses ago, but Danny Davis started it many years before three Congresses ago, and I am proud to yield 2 minutes to him.

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished Member from Ohio, a former jurist and prosecutor herself, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, for 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud now to yield to Gwen Moore, the gentlelady from Wisconsin, 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to close the debate on our side to Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been not just a trial lawyer but has been before the Supreme Court on numerous occasions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1593, the Second Chance Act of 2007. I would like to thank my dear colleague Mr. Danny Davis of Illinois for sponsoring this very important legislation that addresses the prison warehousing crisis in this country. H.R. 1593, a bill of which I am an original co-sponsor, addresses the very serious concerns about the compromised state of warehousing prisoners.

Earlier this year, the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security of which I am a member, held hearings to address the state of certain conditions within the United States prison system. In one of those hearings, my colleagues and I considered the merits of The Second Chance Act, and my amendment which I offered in the last Congress was included in the base bill this year.

The Second Chance Act is designed to reduce recidivism, increase public safety, and help State and local governments better address the growing population of ex-offenders returning to their communities. The bill focuses on four areas: development and support of programs that provide alternatives to incarceration, expansion of the availability of substance abuse treatment, strengthening families and the expansion of comprehensive re-entry services.

Nearly two-thirds of released state prisoners are expected to be re- arrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years of their release. Such high recidivism rates translate into thousands of new crimes each year and wasted taxpayer dollars, which can be averted through improved prisoner reentry efforts.

The ``Second Chance Act of 2007'' allocates funding towards a variety of reentry programs. One of the main components of the bill is the funding of demonstration projects that would provide ex-offenders with a coordinated continuum of housing, education, health, employment, and mentoring services. This broad array of services would provide stability and make the transition for ex-offenders easier, in turn reducing recidivism.

Another reason why I strongly support this legislation is because it includes a provision contained in an amendment I offered during the Judiciary Committee markup of this bill in the 109th Congress. That amendment, incorporated in H.R. 1593 as Section 243 of the bill, requires that the:

Attorney General shall collect data and develop best practices of State corrections departments and child protection agencies relating to the communication and cordination between such State departments and agencies to ensure the safety and support of children of incarcerated parents, including those in foster care and kinship care, and the support of parent-child relationships between incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated, parents and their children, as appropriate to the health and well-being of the children.

My amendment provides for a systematic means of ensuring the safety and support of children of incarcerated parents and the support of children of release for non-violent offenders who have attained the age of at least 45 years of age, have never been convicted of a violent crime, have never escaped or attempted to escape from incarceration, and have not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

The Second Chance Act seeks to ensure that in affording offenders a second chance to turn around their lives and contribute to society, ex- offenders are not too old to take advantage of a second chance to redeem themselves. A second benefit of the legislation is that it would relieve some of the strain on Federal, State, and local government budgets by reducing considerably government expenditures on warehousing prisoners.

Mr. Speaker, some of those who are incarcerated face extremely long sentences, and this language would help to address this problem. Releasing rehabilitated, middle-aged, non-violent offenders from an already overcrowded prison population can be a win-win situation for society and the individual who, like the Jean Valjean made famous in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, is redeemed by the grace of a second chance. The reentry of such individuals into the society will enable them to repay the community through community service and obtain or regain a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. It promises a reduction in burdens to the taxpayer, and an affirmation of the America value that no non-violent offender is beyond redemption.

Mr. Speaker, the number of Federal inmates has grown from just over 24,000 in 1980 to 173,739 in 2004. The cost to incarcerate these individuals has risen from $330 million to $4.6 billion since 2004. At a time when tight budgets have forced many States to consider the early release of hundreds of inmates to conserve tax revenue, early release is a common-sense option to raise capital.

The rate of incarceration and the length of sentence for first-time non-violent offenders have become extreme. Over the past two decades, no area of State government expenditures has increased as rapidly as prisons and jails. According to data collected by the Justice Department, the number of prisoners in America has more than tripled over the last two decades from 500,000 to 1.8 million, with States like California and Texas experiencing eightfold prison population increases during that time. Mr. Chairman, there are more people in the prisons of America than there are residents in States of Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming combined.

Over 1 million people have been warehoused for nonviolent, often petty crimes. The European Union, with a population of 370 million, has one-sixth the number of incarcerated persons as we do, and that includes violent and nonviolent offenders. This is one-third the number of prisoners which America, a country with 70 million fewer people, incarcerates for nonviolent offenses.

The 1.1 million nonviolent offenders we currently lock up represents 5 times the number of people held in India's entire prison system, even though its population is 4 times greater than the United States.

As the number of individuals incarcerated for nonviolent offenses has steadily risen, African-Americans and Latinos have comprised a growing percentage of the overall number incarcerated. In the 1930s, 75 percent of the people entering State and Federal prison were white (roughly reflecting the demographics of the Nation). Today, minority communities represent 70 percent of all new admissions and more than half of all Americans behind bars.

This is why for the last several years I have introduced the H.R. 261, the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act. H.R. 261 directs the Bureau of Prisons, pursuant to a good time policy, to release a prisoner who has served one-half or more of his or her term of imprisonment if that prisoner: (1) has attained age 45; (2) has never been convicted of a crime of violence; and (3) has not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

Over 2 million offenders are incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails. At midyear 2002, 665,475 inmates were held in the Nation's local jails, up from 631,240 at midyear 2001. Projections indicate that the inmate population will unfortunately continue to rise over the years to come.

To illustrate the impact that The Second Chance Act will potentially have on Texas, the Federal prison population for the years 2000, 2001, and 2002 reached 39,679, 36,138 and 36,635 persons respectively; the State prison population for the same years reached 20,200, 20,898, and 23,561 persons. These numbers have grown since 2002, so the impact is indeed significant and the State of Texas is an important stakeholder.

I am also concerned about the rehabilitation and treatment of juvenile offenders in my home State of Texas as it appears that the administrators of TYC have neglected their duties. The April 10, 2007 ``Dallas Morning News'', reported that ``two former Texas Youth Commission administrators were indicted on charges that they sexually abused teenage inmates at the state juvenile prison in Pyote''. The same article also cited the 2005 investigative report by Texas Rangers' Sgt Burzynski which found that the two indicted TYC administrators, Brookins and Hernandez, had repeatedly molested inmates in the Pyote prison. The report is cited as saying that Mr. Brookins, who during some periods was the top official, had shown sex toys and pornography in his office, while Mr. Hernandez molested inmates in classrooms and closets.

I hope that all of my colleagues would join me in supporting the Second Chance Act. Passage of H.R. 1593 would be the start of a long overdue process to eliminate unnecessary costs that result from warehousing prisoners.

I thank our distinguished ranking member.

I am very supportive of this bill, but I want to share some vague uncomfortability with what I think is potentially happening here in Head Start, and I think it's very important to clarify for this administration and for future administrations what this bill is intended to do and not intended to do.

From the time the Republicans took over in Congress, I remember then Subcommittee Chairman Frank Riggs had a number of hearings talking about the lack of an academic focus to Head Start. There was a big debate about what the original role was, but it was supposed to certainly prepare kids who didn't have the same opportunities for their ability to be prepared when they started school.

But there's a reason that Head Start, while it was in the old Department of HEW, didn't move with the Department of Education and stayed with HHS. If it was intended to be merely another education program run by educational bureaucrats, run the same way that every other education program was run, it would be over in the Department of Education. It wouldn't have been a grassroots Head Start program with parent councils that voted and participated and ran it. It would have been part of a pre-K program or a kindergarten program run by the public schools. Increasingly, we see this pressure where the public schools are trying to take over the Head Start program.

The original origins of the Head Start movement came out of the sixties. Saul Alinsky was an organizer in Chicago. The populist movement and the community action organizations led to a wave of saying, we need programs where local low-income groups are empowered to make their own decisions. What this meant many times was it didn't exactly meet the professional goals or standards of where the public schools thought it should be, necessarily where the professionals in Washington thought it should be, but they were engaged at the community level, participating in a way that we have tried to reach in kindergarten and public schools forever. We can't get

low-income parents engaged. It's one of the biggest challenges we have. Yet in the Head Start program, they were engaged all over the country, whether it was rural low income, urban low income. And then when you talk to those parents, you say, What's it like when you go to school? Well, they don't really want us at the public school. There they want us to do fundraisers or they want us to come to back-to-school night. But participating in the governance, participating in the organizations was different.

Now, we had wide support in this body, 91 Members, including Mr. Davis and Congresswomen Loretta Sanchez and Maxine Waters, myself and Ric Keller and many conservatives on the right, who share the concept of empowerment. None of us want malfeasance in office or funding problems, people who aren't accounting. All of us would like to see more professional development. All of us would like to see quantified goals. But in this drift towards trying to use the word ``professional'' all the time, we need to make sure that that doesn't lead to an exclusionary concept that basically says, okay, now really the white middle class is going to take over and run this program like we would like it run.

The fact is when you get groups of parents and give them votes, they're going to make some judgment mistakes. We need to have accountability. I am for accountability. We need to have measurement. We need to empower those people. But this can't be a typical takeover project, because I believe that the major reason Head Start has, in fact, worked in communities across the country is it's engaged with the people at the grassroots level. And sometimes when we use some of the language here, what we really mean is we're going to take it away from these people because they're not quite as skilled and that we don't quite trust their judgments as much.

Now, I appreciate that there was a strong compromise to the side of parents in the conference committee, that, in fact, the language keeping the voting powers to the parents is still there. And it still says that in any major decision, they get a vote. It still says that when there is a conflict with the other people who are governing this, it has to be resolved. There was an additional clause added that seemed to potentially demean the parent councils, where it says ``meaningful consultation and collaboration.'' Now, that was originally going to replace the vote just like we saw in HIDTAs, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, where we tried to have the Federal Government, initially in the proposal of the Bush administration, take voting power away from sheriffs and local police chiefs and use the same words ``meaningful consultation and collaboration.'' That is usually a code word for we're going to pat you on the head and invite you to an occasional meeting but not put you in the decision power.

What's great about this bill is we left the voting power there and no future administration or this one should mistake that the parents still have the voting power. Any meaningful decision, they have a right to have a vote, and there has to be a resolution with the policy councils. This additional language that was Senate language is supplemental and did not alter the policy council. Of course, parent councils should be a meaningful consultation and collaboration, not just as a ``term'' but real meaningful consultation. They should also have the vote.

I want to thank the leadership on the Democratic side and the Republican side in the House and Senate in leaving the real vote to parents. It was a huge victory, a grassroots, bipartisan, liberal- conservative victory that should stand and hopefully will not be undone by administrative interpretation.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 719) to require convicted sex offenders to register online identifiers, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Members of the House, H.R. 719, the KIDS Act, addresses the problems of convicted sex offenders infiltrating the Internet to contact and prey on minors.

You've heard about this problem before under the measure that has just passed the House. We are all familiar with the problem. There is not a parent who is not concerned that through the Internet a sex offender may attempt to contact a child for criminal, vicious sex purposes.

The KIDS Act addresses this problem in three ways: It authorizes funding for the Federal Probation and Pretrial Office to enhance the agency's ability to monitor the computer use by convicted Federal sex offenders. In particular, it authorizes funding to evaluate and purchase Internet filtering and monitoring systems to better enable probation officers to monitor the computer use of sex offenders. This is very important. This should help ensure that if an offender violates the terms of release as to Internet use, the violation will be discovered so the offender's release can be promptly revoked.

The next thing we do here is codify the current practice of some sentencing judges by specifically authorizing a court to require as a condition of probation that a convicted sex offender cooperate with the installation of Internet filtering and monitoring systems.

Finally, the bill directs the Sentencing Commission to consider increased penalties for sex crimes committed over the Internet where the defendant lied about his age or concealed identity as a sex offender.

This measure before us now adds a new criminal provision to reach those who set up ``virtual money systems'' to facilitate the trafficking of child pornography over the Internet. There's no simple way of keeping the Internet out of the hands of those who would use it for these and other sinister purposes. Nonetheless, the KIDS Act goes a long way toward addressing the problem of Internet sex predation by enhancing supervision of convicted sex offenders and increasing penalties for these crimes.

I can't imagine anyone in this House on either side of the aisle not supporting a measure such as this.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First of all, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for the hard work that he has put in on this measure. We appreciate the cooperation that we've had in the course of this. And of course we yield to no one in recognizing him as the Congress' foremost expert on the Internet, and thus his being involved in this kind of legislation for quite a few years.

Earlier versions of this bill required registration of online identifiers of sex offenders. And as the gentleman knows, a sex offender can change his user name and IP address in about two seconds, so we didn't feel that was particularly helpful. We thought monitoring sex offenders before they ever got on the Internet was a better way to go, and we're glad that we've been able to reach some closure with him on that subject.

Now, on the criminal provisions, I want to tactfully suggest that we've got a better way here in this bill, and I think most of the lawyers and those who followed this shall agree with us. There is no point in overburdening prosecutors. What we've done with reference to criminal provisions is that the practice of grooming, where sex predators lie about their age on the Internet to entice minors into sexual activity, obviously is horrific and widespread, but the other approach would have required prosecutors to prove a new and separate offense in order to get a higher sentence for offenses involving grooming. We didn't think that would be the better way to proceed.

Under the minority approach, a prosecutor would have had to prove all the elements of this new crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This is, I think, unnecessary and probably a very high burden to reach, given that there exists in criminal law a law against enticement that covers grooming activity. And so the approach we finally settled on directs the sentencing commission to provide tougher sentences for predatory behavior that involves grooming.

And you don't get the chairman of this committee talking about tougher sentencing on very many things around here; this is one that I can support without qualification.

So what we've done is deal with a serious problem of grooming and get to the same place as other approaches that have been suggested to us in what we believe, from a criminal justice point of view, is far more efficient. And with the new provisions that would fight financial facilitation of child pornography, we think we've got a bill. And we thank Mr. Pomeroy for helping us get there.

And with that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have the final closing speaker, Mr. Pomeroy, to whom I will yield the balance of our time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.